R-Type V1  (Preview)
Platform: Commodore 64
Gametype: Undefined
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R-Type V1
1987 Electric Dreams

Status: Preview, Findability: 3/5
Coding: David Jolliff, James Smart
Graphics: Mark Jones
Sound: Barry Leitch, Robert MCGawan

The famous sideways scroller R-Type was infact released on the C64 by Electric Dreams…. but a different version to what was originally planned and was being worked on….. CVG magazine gave away a demo tape for all readers, which contained a early look at the game conversion of the popular arcade… and it was rather good too….

There was a whole different set of programmers working on this game, compared with the version that was created by Manfred Trenz.

What is quite amusing, is that of the time of this game…. Manfred Trenz had completed Katakis, which was banned because of Activision taking out a law suit saying that Katakis was too close to their R-Type licence…. And look who they eventually signed to do the official conversion!

I didn’t like the version which was released…. it feels rough and shoddy… not even as good as the superior Master System version. The demo from CVG may have been early… but it felt so much better and closer to the arcade. If Electric Dreams had stuck with the original crew working on the game, they may have well had a first class shoot-em-up which would be high in the ranks of C64 gaming today.

Zeldin stumbled over a review for R-Type, which was in the issue 12/88 (it came out in november), shots from the version 1 of the game. Reading the review made it clear that the reviewers already had a fully playable game. They already gave a ‘hit’-star for it!. The game recieved great praise and was told to have great music. There is no proof that this means it was complete, as ASM were apparently renound for reviewing incomplete games.

Recently, a big find was made by Glenn Rune Gallefoss, when he remembered that he had most of the original game which he was given by the creators themselves.

Shockingly, most of the game is here and almost all the levels are now present in preview form, although in a very early stage in some cases. This pushes past the one level preview that was only in existance. Now you can check the game out for yourself what we have so far. In addition to Glenn’s findings, Jazzcat has passed on a Phoenix and Conquest crack which contains yet another level. In total there are about 6 levels, but level 3 is missing with the large ship guardian!… Maybe this was never started?…. We hope that this may be uncovered at some point!

One bad thing to say is that the colours are all wrong, and there is a lack of them throughout. There is still no sound in the game. But there is something very exciting even more so recently…

…. Barry Leitch, who created the music for the game, recently dug out all the tunes created for the game (Which were never included with the levels). They have currently been donated to HVSC and have never been heard before.

Also talking recently to Barry at BIT5 Brighton, it was found that Version 1 was scrapped as the programmers were taking too long working on the game. Meanwhile, even after all the controversy of Katakis, Activision were so impressed with the work on this game, they hired Manfred’s team to finish off the game in a few weeks. Version 1 was scrapped, which was deemed a little too slow and not quite working out as they wanted. Apparently the programmer was having all sorts of problems trying to get the game running smoothly. As you can see from the previews, the game does run a little slower.

It’s not quite known if an even later version exists, as you could quite safely say that what we have here is all that remains of the game. Hopefully one day soon we may be able to present you a version of the levels with all of Barry’s music, as intended.

A shame… the original version is superior in certain ways…

Contributions: Zeldin, Deev, GRG/Blues Muz, Barry Leitch, Jazzcat


http://www.gamesthatwerent.com/gtw64/rtype-v1/
